The time rapidly approaches for Samhain in the Northern hemisphere and Beltane or Beltaine in the Southern world, mirror images and two halves of the same whole.

At Samhain, the beginning of the old winter, in a single purple candle we can drop grains of dried sage, breaking with sad echoes from the past that hold us back.

At the same time wherever we live in the world we can welcome Beltane, the start of the ancient summer, pulsating beneath our feet.

A bitter sweet six months since the two festivals last appeared as opposing elements on the wheel Yet in spite of all, we light our twin red Beltane candles in hope and make them sparkle with salt sprinkled in the flame to welcome life returning; we draw on the visions of the Samhain fireside of the ancestors who assure us we carry within us their hopes and their wisdom and can leave behind after mourning sorrows with the dying year.

We create from what has been lost as we let go what stands in the way of claiming or reclaiming our power.

Though death still is ever-present in the world right now we cannot cower in the shadows but must rejoice in every day we are granted, a blessing and a bonus; for as we look up at the fires of the ancestors in the stars we know that our descendants hundreds of years hence will still wish upon the stars and rejoice or sorrow as we have done over the last eighteen months, at the gains and losses of the seasons’ turning.

Samhain’s Jack o’ lantern whom the loveliest of Morrigu Fate sisters three times in his life asked to go with her across the river of death to immortality, was too afraid; now he walks between worlds with his small light, recalled as the Samhain pumpkin. But six months later he is reborn as wild Beltane Jack ‘o’ Green, who seizes life, free as the blossoming woodland greenery and crowns the maiden goddess with wildflowers. Both Jacks are one, are within us and the choice is not always easy, all we can do is to make decisions based on the resources and the knowledge we have right now and what we have learned, no longer regretting the past but using it to weave the glorious garland of the future with the flowers that will bloom again and again.

If we do not seek to change what is inevitability, then we can live authentically, beautifully and eternally in the winds, the waters, in our words, our kindnesses, in those we try to influence for the better, in our idiosyncrasies and unique foot and blueprint and the newly blossoming flowers of summer and the falling leaves of the coming winter days.